


An Honest Man's Goodbye

by mythomagicallydelicious



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Cardassia, Cardassians, Gen, Implied Obsidian Order, Sylam Zanara
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-01
Updated: 2017-12-01
Packaged: 2019-02-04 13:24:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12771993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mythomagicallydelicious/pseuds/mythomagicallydelicious
Summary: "As if! You are such an awful liar."





	An Honest Man's Goodbye

Sylam Zanara was used to her routine. She kept house for a professor of the nearby military academy. She came in early in the morning and enjoyed a cup of tea with her employer before setting about the tasks for her day while he was at work. On days when he did not teach, he would sometimes sit at his desk and work over files and records various data padds until lunch time. On days when he did not work, she provided lunch for the two of them, and they sat at the table together, as insisted upon by her employer.

 

Zanara, in the early days of her employment, did not speak to her employer almost at all, and she certainly had not sat for tea or meals with him. But over time and low insistencies from her employer, over countless offers with no hidden motives, Zanara trusted the offers at face value and it became a part of her routine to sit at his table and take meals with him. Sometimes indulging in light conversation, but never the gossip of the city, as she would have expected from any other home she had kept in the past.

 

Over this time she learned bits and pieces of her employer. Perhaps not his true opinions on certain matters, though those would be hard-pressed to come from any Cardassian who valued their scales. Zanara, as much as she liked and admired her employer, did not dare enter into a conversation of politics when the threat of the Order hung in the air, no matter how free it felt to walk around the house.

 

But Zanara, over the years of her employment, came to learn that her employer valued life, people, and honesty. He did not speak much, but seemed desiring of some companionship. He never told her a direct lie, and she never caught him in an indirect lie, either. Zanara held curiosity over his day, sometimes, after she left for her own home once her work was completed, but she never pressed him for answers.

 

They had a pleasant working relationship, and Zanara had come to look forward to her time in the house. Some days it felt so empty, and she liked to feel the life it held when her employer allowed laughter or conversation to flow through it. It felt like she was slowly helping to cure an unresponsive man, stuck in his own mind. Zanara couldn’t help but choose that metaphor for her employer, despite his ability to speak. Zanara’s best friend’s brother had come back from the Occupation changed, unable to speak, and not from any visible wound. As much as her friend and their family spoke to him, tried every medicine to cure him, he could not come back to him…

 

Zanara felt a small victory against whatever force held that man when she was able to bring a lighter feeling to her employer’s house. When she told a joke and he laughed. Zanara was her employer’s senior by a good number of years, but it felt right when she was able to break through his shell as if he were a friend.

 

One day, he brought an unusually solemn topic to hand. He would be leaving, and he would not be returning. He had…business, on another planet, and he could not see himself returning to his home for some time, if ever.

 

Zanara saw through his words. She had grown used to him speaking directly, less formally than the Cardassian way. She knew it resulted from his association with a woman, for he had not been that way before they became familiar. Zanara did not mind the association. That, too, had brought life back to her employer and his home, and it made Zanara smile to think about.

 

But now she saw through his indirect words. “As if,” she said to him. “You are such an awful liar.” Her employer looked startled by her immediate rebuttal of his words, but not entirely surprised. The house felt colder, emptier than it had felt in a long time as he continued on.

 

“You may choose to believe what you wish, Zanara. But I do not intend to return to this place again. It is for what is right.”

 

At those words Zanara heard the conviction and brokenness in her employer’s tone. He probably thought he hid the brokenness well. And to the rest of Cardassian Prime, he probably did. But she knew him at his moments-between-moments. When he was slumped against his desk and hands tapping his sides repeatedly, clawing at his scales as he tried to focus on his work and not his mind. Zanara knew he was affected by his time as a soldier. He was not the same as the shelled brother of a friend. But he was still broken.

 

Zanara knew he meant to not return. She could feel the strength he put into his voice, and she knew it was not a show. Whatever plan he had, it was as strong as his conviction to see it through. Zanara bowed her head in acquiescence to his words.

 

“But, I do not want to leave you in need of work. I have put in order a stipend that I should hope covers your living expenses for the rest of your life, so you may live on in comfort, despite the loss of a living I am giving you.”

 

Zanara looked up to meet his eyes. She came to stand in front of her employer, reaching forward with both hands and letting them rest upon his forearms, squeezing lightly as she spoke.

 

“Marritza, you have been a good employer to me for over ten years. Whatever you are planning now, and not telling me of, you have your reasons. But I see in your eyes and your life that you are determined to see it through. May strength be with you as you board this venture, and may you find the peace you desire as you go.”

 

Marritza’s eyes widened as she spoke, not expecting such a reaction from his housekeeper. He grasped her own arms back in response, looking down into her eyes. Zanara could see the tell-tale marks of grief plainly written across his face. He was lined like that of a man twice his age.

 

“Thank you, Zanara. I wish you well in your endeavors after I have parted.” Marritza looked as if he was toying with his last words before deciding to speak them, which he did, in a low voice with a strange, dark humor Zanara was not used to hearing in her employer. “And for all of our sakes, hopefully I will improve in my lying before what needs to be done is finished.”

 

Marritza released her and backed away. “Your services are no longer required. Thank you, Zanara, for your work. I will remember it and your companionship as I am underway. Goodbye.”

 

Zanara looked about the house, and then back to her former employer. He was too kind, she thought. Too kind to deserve whatever torture he has put himself through. Whatever torture he is about to put himself through. But Zanara knew there was no point in arguing. She bowed her head to him and turned to leave. She would return a couple of more times in the following week to pack away a few possessions she had left at the house. But each time chills would rush over her, as without the presence of Marritza, without a teasing conversation about the merits of different herbal teas, or whether high-necked collars were too formal, the house was yet again a shell.

 

She hoped wherever Marritza went, he could break out of that shell at last. She retired to her home and thought about him every day, praying he found his peace, until she passed in her sleep three years later.

**Author's Note:**

> A prompt from tumblr user @nerdfishgirl .


End file.
